[Closed] Is this a fair price (bathroom content)?

How long does he say it will take? how many doing it? are you supplying all materials? many other variables that mean the answer could be yes or no.......

If he is supply all materials as well thats not too bad IMO assuming he is a good tiler.

Tiler in that London cost us £40 sqm.

Bathroom fitting, not sure about as it was included in renovation costs from builder.

£200-£250/day is about the going rate where I am for tradesmen. If you're supplying all the kit then his £2600 would appear to be all labour and works out at somewhere between 10-13 days work. To fit a bathroom. I'm no expert but I reckon that's quite a long time.

I'll be supplying the suite, wet wall, tiles and flooring. He will supply anything else that is needed. Suite is straight replacement so no moving of any plumbing

Very hard to say without seeing the current state of the room and working out exactly what he needs to supply. Also depends a bit on where you are in the country, access to property for van/skip/deliveries etc.

Normally I would say get another 2 quotes and it will give you an idea if it is way off but it sounds like you are having issues getting people to quote.

Seems about right. Maybe a touch high due to the tiles only being a short height and not all round.

Does also depend on the state of the place whether they are supplying tile grout of their own and copper pipe/fixings if required.

Any water damage discovered when removing shower will be charged separately, so if plaster board needs to come out that will be additional.

Its a very small room so tiling and floor fitting should reflect that, but I accept the time to fit a suite will be the same irrespective of the size of the bathroom

*Get as many quotes as you can.*

I'm going through a similar process at the moment - I'll be supplying most materials and also preparing the walls & doing all the crappy little jobs, so it's predominantly a labour job.

Replace shower wall, refit shower door, refit toilet, install new basin/vanity unit, install mirrored wall cabinet.

First quote came in at £1350 😂

Safe to say I'm doing it myself.

Steep I would say, get at least three quotes and consider doing the tiling yourself.

Getting quotes has been nigh on impossible.

Guy known to me, done good work on another project I'm involved in failed to turn up three times to look at it.

Guy used through work came out to look and never got back to me

Three others not returned calls or messages

Facebook pleas for recommendations hasn't resulted in a single recommendation, just a list of people to avoid and various nightmarish stories!

Where are you? If it's south London I know an excellent plumber who did my bathroom complete and other stuff.

<span style="color: #444444; font-size: 12px;">"Getting quotes has been nigh on impossible"</span>

Hence why this chap is quoting £2,600 for less than a week's work.

We are in the process of having our bathroom done, the labour was £2500 for 2 tradies for 10 days. We needed the floor reboarded, a couple of  joists replaced, plastering of walls, 7sqm tiling, all the pipework in the room replaced and the three B's replacing (bath, basin and bog) which is why it has taken so long.

I'm paying £35/sqm for tiling including adhesive. £150/day for another gut to remove existing shower tray/enclosure, 16sqm of tiles and bath from a 'tiled box', then refit a new shower tray/enclosure and the bath after the tiling has been completed.

As you are supplying most of the kit you have deprived him of a fair margin so his price reflects this.  Try to work out what cuts are required, maybe thats what has put others off.

Small rooms are a pain to work in, no space for tools and materials etc. Where will he do the tile cutting for example? Outside perhaps?

Time required for inconvenience will soon add up. Additionally, bathrooms are a pain to fit and guaranteed, plumbing alterations and bits will be required, so maybe he has factored that in. I've done a number of bathroom refurbished and refits and they always take longer than I would reasonably expect, after all, I may be slow, but at least I'm crap! 😉

For difficult access jobs, I rarely gave an estimate of time, as the automatic calculation is to divide my quote by the number of days and then the general and inaccurate perception of tradesmen being on loadsa money is continued.

You're supplying materials, so as said above, that removes a profit margin. It also means you might not have all the materials. What happens if part of the shower enclosure breaks or goes missing? Will you pay for his lost time?

What value do you place in his expertise and experience?

Ultimately, it's a good price if you are happy with his work, you get the end result you were hoping for and it's done in a timely manner, or when you would like it done.  I appreciate you don't want to be ripped off, no one does but if you end up with the aforementioned then whatever you agree, it's a fair price.

Remove existing and dispose inc skip £350

remove wall tiles and prep to retile £10/m2 (no plaster work)

install bath inc pipework alteration £150

install wc inc pipework alteration if required £150

install basin inc pipework alteration if required £150

Fit shower tray and connect to wastes £75

enclosure fit £100

shower valve disconnect and refit £85

install cabinets £50 each

tiling to walls £35-40/m2 inc adhesive and grout

install click lock flooring £15/m2

build wet wall ????  How big etc. Who's suppling materials

plus any floor prep work, small floors can't be done on m2 rate normally as there isn't much.

any radiators?

All + VAT.

These are prices that we work to/get and adjust as needed to fit the jobs/site.  As mentioned above, small bathrooms are a real pain and are normally a lot more complicated than customers are aware of.

I went back and asked.

Confirmed price excluded suite, flooring, towel rail and flooring, all of which he asked me to supply. He recommends I get this through local plumb store where I will get a 20% through him (no doubt he will get a cash back as well)

I asked him to break down costs
The estimate  I gave for contains a sum for materials we will use to install your shower room £350.00 the rest is labour and waste disposal and profit.

So on that basis he is charging £2,350 in labour for what should be (by general consensus) around 4/5 days work. Not VAT registered

I'm happy to be corrected by someone more expert than me but that seems way steep

For what you want doing, I'd say it's more than a weeks' work. Unless he is planning to put the hours in, or he and his mate are quite small and two of them can go at it, but they'd need to be really tiny and the nature of the work is process driven.

Who said 4/5 days?

Do you have confidence that he understands your requirements and expectations and be able to fulfil them? What value do you place on your requirements being met?

I reckon 2-3 weeks for a bathroom fit, from rip out to finish depending on complexity for 1 guy.

You say things are going back in same place, but there's usually some messing even so.  I can tile pretty quickly too having done it for 20 years as 1st trade.

a week would be very optimistic I think.

I wouldn't pay that much.

No wrighty you probably wouldn't. Let's play, what would you charge?

Also, +1 blazin-saddles, what he said.

I paid £2.5k for labour for a bathroom refit in October,

It took 2 of them 8 days to complete. Included floor and wall ting moving pipework, painting, installing bath and shower. I didn't think it was too expensive TBH.

FWIW...we paid a TOTAL of 6K for 2 new bathrooms which included some wall restructuring to fit a bigger shower in the en-suite. The plumber said to use his supplier & we'd get his discount (which was true, cos we did) I can't remember the exact breakdown but we had a decent shower put in the en-suite & a reasonable one in the 'family' bathroom.
We were happy but no doubt someone will come along soon & say they had similar done for 1/2 the price or less.

Frank, where are you based?

Interesting and helpful feedback, thanks. The fitter said it would take a week.

I don;t mind paying a fair price, hence me asking if people think it is fair.

I'm in the Scottish Borders esselgrunty

"I’m in the Scottish Borders esselgrunty"

Shame, my plumber & tiler were from North Yorks.

A weeks work for 2600 is a piss take. Even with some contingency and going 2 days over so 7 days in total, basic maths says 360 ish a day. C'mon now, that's top dollar. I don't even pay site engineers that who are providing 20k's worth of surveying kit in with the deal.

"A weeks work for 2600 is a piss take. Even with some contingency and going 2 days over so 7 days in total, basic maths says 360 ish a day. C’mon now, that’s top dollar. I don’t even pay site engineers that who are providing 20k’s worth of surveying kit in with the deal."

Fair enough, so can you help the OP out in any way?

Staggered that it takes two blokes over a week to refit a bathroom. 🙂

It took me all bloody summer. 🙂

I’d happily handover £2.5k to avoid EVER having to plumb a bathroom again.

£360/day for 2 bathroom fitters sounds ok. I'm a gardener and that's a familiar figure for me, on my own, working 8-4 in the summer.

My favourite threads the building trade prices, plumbum oscillans all thes dodgy plumbers, get a quote from Pimlico plumbers who are on 100k

Never much comment about how much folk earn as a tradesman offshore or anything to do with the oil industry although maybe not as much now

I always like it how people work out self employed people over getting paid for working 52 weeks out of the year. 2500 sounds expensive, but consider when you are working self employed you have plenty of other stuff to do when not actually contracted for a job, you need to be a sales man and the like and a thousand other jobs that you don't get paid for.

I'm actually thinking of going self employed myself, am I hell sitting here working out an hourly rate for 52 weeks, I'm working it out for 26 and 13 weeks actual work at certain target profit levels. £2500 over 26 weeks for 2 people is only 32.5k per year each before tax and other costs they have like petrol, tools etc..

Not overly expensive imo. £1,250 a week per person is 35 quid an hour (7 hours per day).

I wouldn't think 4/5 days, probably closer to the 4 mind is completely unreasonable if getting the whole thing finished, but might be a bit much there. depends on size of room and stuff I guess, obviously a smaller bathroom is much faster, you'll need to guage that.

I used to labour with my da fitting kitchens, we used to do 2 a week, 1 if a big kitchen, but that was getting external plumbers tilers, electricians and that in, and timing it so one finished another comes in etc and leave them to it..

aye - a self employed tradesman will be lucky to be able to bill someone for half the hours actually worked

I'm a 20+ year served kitchen and bathroom fitter with tiling as my specialty.  I provide public liability insurance and approx £30k worth of van and tools daily for approx 8-9hrs a day.  I then go home, work on quotes, organise other trades and materials.

I reckon to be able to work and charge for, approx 40-45 weeks of the year.  Which is fairly good I think compared to most self employed guys.

Bathrooom fitting is hard, complicated work and I see nothing wrong with charging £200-250 a day for it.

I recently had my bathroom done.large bathroom 6m x 4m.
The work involved 12m2 tiling, plastering walls and ceiling, new suite,new taps, making new bath panel, installing new light.
Cost of work was similar at £2500.
By the time I did the floor and added fittings, new shower screen it was more like £3500 so sounds reasonable to me.
(I’m in the SE so add 25%.)😉

Seems alright to me.

We supplied the wall/floor tiles, bath, vanity and sink and taps etc and our guy did it for $4.5k - complete re-tile and fitting of appliances

You have to bear in mind they do a lot of waterproofing etc. Not only is it stripping the old stuff out, it's making the surfaces good to tile on again. When ours took our floor up, there was no concrete slab, just compacted sand (Aussie tradies take shortcuts!). This takes time too. We didn't have a bathroom for a couple of weeks.

Apparently it's a shortcut to not properly waterproof - or to only do half the walls. Client might not realise until months later when youve got damp patches or mould showing!

We just got an an suite fitted, we supplied the floorcand wall tiles, shower, sink, toilet units, shower mixer, doors.

There were some issues where things wouldnt fit and he had to build a stud wall off the main wall as the shower mixer was too deep.

It took him 7 days instead of 5.

Cost us 1500 quid plus 300 for his materials (paint, grout, plaster board, etc) and thiscwas in Surrey.

His wife helped with grouting painting etc.

So 2600 seems excessive

@Frankconway, just spoken to a pal of mine who's renovated 2 properties in the Borders, both near Kelso, I asked him if he could reccommend anyone. He said...'All plumbers in the borders are complete tossers. Seriously! Totally unreliable is probably the best that can be said about them'.

I mean he won't/can't have experienced EVERY one but knowing him he'll have had dealings with a fair few.

Good luck!

We've just had a quote of £5,800 (ex vat) to re-fit a bathroom - this is in the non trendy / more stabby outer suburbs of west London. Works include:

- supply and lay 6m2 18mm plywood floor

- remove 5m2 existing tiles and make good

- remove stuck on wood panelling and make good

- lay 6m2 floor tiles (with me providing tiles and assoc. materials)

- install 9m2 wall tiles (per above)

- Install new bath, radiator, loo and sink - all pipes required already in situ

- Paint walls and ceiling - room is 7m2 x 3m high - with me providing all the paint

And this is from a guy I've used before who's normally at the cheaper end of quotes.

At this rate it's cheaper for me to buy 10 days leave from work and do it myself!

I don't think I'll be trying Pimlico Plumbers for a quote either:

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/679438/london-plumber-earns-prime-minister-exotic-holidays-weekends-pimlico-plumbers-jobcentre

£210K a year - fair play to them if they can get that!

Now Cheddar, that one IS a rip off!  A week might be a struggle for that but it would need much more.

By way of contrast, I'm just finishing a Bathroom that was:

full strip out inc disposal

remove 20m2 wall tiles and replaster to paint finish,

remove 8m2 floor tiles

cement board to overboard floor (few use 18mm ply anymore)

underfloor heating inc connection to circuit and upgrade to RCBO and test.

retile to 14m2 on walls, 8m2 on floor, all materials included.

fit lighting and shaver points, lit mirror cab

fit new wall mounted taps wall hung basin

fit new wc

fit free standing cast iron bath

fit flush shower tray, inset shower valve and fixed head with enclosure.

i supply all fittings except sanitary ware and tiles and got paid £3165+ VAT it took 2 people 10 days plus a day for the plasterer and 1/2 day for the sparky.  Skip was £250, materials around £350.

<span style="color: #444444; font-size: 16px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: #eeeeee;">Where are you? If it’s south London I know an excellent plumber who did my bathroom complete and other stuff.</span>

Wouldnt mind those details as im in SE19 and will need a new bathroom soon.

I'm looking to redo one bathroom and tidy up another - both medium sized. Quote for bigger job was £5.5k with me providing everything. Rather put me off; I'm in Surrey, think I need to get some more quotes....

Cheddar - why dont you just do the easy bits yourself, like the stripping out, painting.  Then even if your plumber wants 500 a day you ve saved loads.

5.8k he clearly does not want to do it.

Painters in kingston now want 250 a day, good luck if they can get it.

I agree with @poolman - I always do all I can in the way of stripping out, removing old suites/boilers etc etc and capping stuff off. I do this for more than one reason though - it saves me money yes, but I also want to feel like I can do something and not just be a useless ****. I look at my father in law and he can do (or at least used to - he's getting a bit old for it now) pretty much anything inside and outside the house – and all skills he has taught himself over the years. He helped me do a big garden project last year (a raised decked area + a flagged patio) and he put me to shame – I did all the grafting but he just knew all the small tricks to make things right.